How BTM Solved a Cashierless Store Challenge for a National Retailer
You’re hurrying through the airport to catch your flight, but you also want to stop at the convenience store and grab your favorite magazine to pass the time. The store’s crowded, but you don’t worry about missing your flight because the store has cashierless technology. You can grab the item, scan it, and leave. The consumer’s mobile wallet or store account is billed for the item. No check-outlines or cashiers needed.
One national retailer aimed to pilot this technology. Marshall Retail Group (MRG) is the nation’s leading travel retailer in the airport, casino and report marketplace, spanning 200 stores across the country. MRG’s goal for its airport location was to make shopping faster and easier for the customer while reducing the number of retail associates needed in the store.
Because of the speed, cost efficiency and convenience, cashierless stores are the future of retail. But the tech behind it is complicated and uncharted territory for most companies. That’s when BTM stepped in.
Integrating emerging technology
For this initiative, the central question was how to integrate the cashierless technology in order to access the transaction data, format and convert it, and send it to downstream systems such as the sales audit system. These processes must be as efficient as possible, enabling transaction data to be grabbed and transferred to MRG’s systems seamlessly and in near real-time.
At first glance, this scenario would require a lot of manual work involving data dumps and manually logging in and dragging over files. There would also be the risk for human error.
Our team partnered with MRG to look at the problem differently and offer an automated solution.
Because of our experience working with cashierless technology, we were able to automate the entire integration for MRG in just 2-3 weeks. We had previously built an integration hub for MRG, and this was updated to include a new custom adapter that grabs the file of transaction information from an S3 bucket and converts the data into the format MRG needs for its sales audit system. The data is then automatically pushed to that system.
BTM worked closely with the cashierless tech team to set up the S3 bucket, as well as guided MRG on the concept of S3, user access and how the integration would flow. Today, the retailer has an automated, seamless environment.
Making cashierless technology work for your retail stores
This pilot project positions MRG as an innovative retailer, with the ability to offer a truly delightful experience to bustling customers across the country. As all teams continue learning from the pilot project, we’re looking down the road to future roll-outs across the U.S.
If you’re considering cashierless tech for your retail operations, we can help you consider the technology factors, data requirements, hardware needs, and how to bridge the differences.